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Blood Washed Heretic
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 167
| Posted 9/3/2003 10:09 AM (GMT -6) |   | It's fairly obvious by now that I have a strong belief in justice. Many seem to feel that I'm unfairly critical of US policy in particular, but that's not entirely true. I feel that corporate greed is what has largely led to the corruption of American politics. I know most of the conservative types on here don't really care that corporate excesses are mainly responsible for the vast number of wellfare-dependent people in this country. (They don't even try to get jobs, and besides, they don't come to MY church, so why should I care?)
So, I thought I'd take a different angle in approaching the issue of corporate SIN (let's not trivialize it, now). If oppressing the poor doesn't bother you, would it bother you to know that Big Business (even the blue chips) is heavily involved in the dissemination of pornographic material and landing a windfall in the process? Check out this ABC News report:
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CORPORATE AMERICA CASHING IN ON PORN
Since the 1970s, pornography has grown from a small niche industry catering to theaters and enthusiasts into a multibillion-dollar business with mainstream appeal. Last year, Americans rented more than 750 million adult films on video or DVD, and watched millions more on cable and satellite at home or in hotel rooms. In addition, they spent more than $2 billion accessing movies and pictures on the Internet's estimated 100,000 pornographic sites.
The modern porn industry was born in California's San Fernando Valley, where it had two huge boosts from new technologies. First came the VCR, which allowed people to rent tapes at the local video store and watch in the privacy of their own home. Then new delivery systems — cable, satellite and the Internet — meant they didn't even have to leave the couch to get their porn.
The new delivery systems have also allowed major corporations to get a piece of the pie without getting too close to the product itself. While the dirty work of actually making the films is still largely done in the San Fernando Valley, major corporations like AT&T, General Motors and Marriott are sharing the profits by helping get the product to consumers. At the same time, a new generation of entrepreneurs — including dot-com techies and Ivy League business school grads — are bringing ambitious business strategies to the mix.
The Web Entrepreneurs
Greg Clayman is a distributor who buys adult content and then sells it on the Internet. When he and his partner, Chuck Tsiamis, saw the dot-com boom starting in 1996, they quit their insurance jobs to form an adult Internet business, VS Media.
"You want to jump on the New Age bandwagon and provide content for the adult side of the business," he said, "like Microsoft supplies software to many businesses around the world."
Clayman's company operates like cable TV, but on the Internet. From offices in Southern California, VS Media delivers live, one-on-one video of models to a network of sites run by small independent Webmasters. The models are employed by production companies. VS Media makes its money by taking a 30 percent cut of each transaction.
The company started with 500 Webmasters in 1996, and now has 20,000, each with an average of four to five sites. Most visitors to the sites watch free, nonexplicit video that VS Media offers as a tease, but Clayman says an average of 2,000 a day take the bait and pay for a one-on-one session — enough to make his company a $20 million business with 40 employees.
Clayman says they built their business on the model of a hugely successful film distributor. "For the first 20 years, Miramax Films never produced their own films. They acquired films, they marketed them and they distributed them. That's what we do," he said.
Missy Suicide, a 22-year-old entrepreneur from Portland, Ore., is a Webmaster who uses a different model — the niche market. Her site, Suicide Girls, stands out from the crowd by providing specialized content: nude pictures of young women from the "alternative" scene ("Goth, punk and emo girls," she says.)
With just $5,000 of her own money for start-up costs, she focused on subscription as her revenue stream: "I knew that I didn't have investors and that I needed to make money through membership in order to pay for the site and in order to pay the girls," she said.
Now, six months later, she claims to average 40,000 viewers a day, and to have grossed $80,000, with her revenue doubling every month.
The Producers
Vivid Entertainment is one of the biggest players in the San Fernando porn industry. The company produces 80 hard-core films a year, and has successfully expanded from the VHS and DVD market into satellite and cable TV.
In 1999, Vivid bought two hard-core pay-per-view channels from Playboy, which had acquired them when it bought the rival Spice Networks. Playboy was already making much more money from its soft-core pay-per-view channels than its magazine, but was reluctant to take the step into more explicit content.
Under Vivid's ownership, the hard-core channels grew rapidly, and last year the company turned around and sold the two channels back to Playboy, plus its own channel, for $70 million.
"That TV deal is what put them over the top," said Paul Fishbein, publisher of the industry publication Adult Video News. "The ability to run those channels, to get them for practically nothing and then to sell them back to Playboy for the amount of millions that they did was brilliant."
The deal also shows how the public's growing taste for explicit sexual content has nudged Playboy — once the biggest name in adult publishing — in a new direction. "I don't think there's any question that the public has forced them to become more explicit," said Dennis McAlpine, an independent Wall Street analyst.
Since buying the hard-core channels, Playboy's pay-per-view audience has nearly doubled and the company's stock has steadily risen.
The Hoteliers
Adult movies are now available in 1.5 million American hotel rooms, 40 percent of the total. Almost all of the upscale chains that cater to business travelers provide them, including Marriott International.
Although only one in 10 guests pays for a movie, most of those who do opt for adult fare, which is billed at a premium rate of $10 a title. Most of the revenue goes to the in-room movie companies that provide the content and the TV sets, but the hotels make 10 percent to 15 percent.
Adult movies account for around 80 percent of hotels' in-room entertainment profits — a small proportion of overall profits, but significant enough that the chains want to keep making them available. Marriott said in a statement that it saw the matter as a privacy issue and did not stand in the way of customers who want to view adult movies.
Only one of the upscale chains, Texas-based Omni, has barred adult movies, removing them from its 30 Omni-owned hotels and encouraging its franchisees to do the same. Omni took the step in 1999, citing its commitment to "family values." The chain received thousands of positive e-mails from grateful guests, but estimates the move cost $1 million in annual revenues and $3 million in additional costs to bring in a new provider.
The Blue-Chip Corporations
Porn's profits have proven irresistible to some of America's biggest corporations. "The revenues are large enough that many of these, if not most of these companies, are willing to put up with a certain level of criticism in order to maintain the cash flow," said Fred Lane, author of Obscene Profits: The Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age.
Long-distance telephone service giants AT&T and MCI Worldcom have been leaders in the 1-900 market, which is dominated by phone-sex services and psychics. Although phone sex continues to generate almost $1 billion a year, its popularity is declining because of competition from the Internet.
Although AT&T is discontinuing its 1-900 service by the end of this year, the company is still making money from pornography on its cable services, which carry several adult pay-per-view channels, including Playboy's Hot Network. AT&T's proposed merger with Comcast Cable will reach 22 million subscribers in the United States, making the merged company the largest distributor of pornography in the country.
AT&T said in a statement that only a small segment of its customer base buys adult films.
A former AT&T cable executive, Jon Radloff, said the adult pay-per-view market was "very profitable" for AT&T, but not something the company wanted to draw attention to. "We wanted to provide it, but it wasn't something that we touted in our advertising campaigns," said Radloff, who was recently laid off in a merger-related downsizing. "We knew that if you offered it, the folks that were interested in that sort of entertainment would find it."
Another blue-chip company that profits from porn is General Motors, whose 225-channel DirecTV satellite service includes the Hot Channel, one of the channels Playboy bought from Vivid, and other adult channels. The adult offerings reportedly generate $150 million in revenue for DirecTV. "It certainly is a powerful contributor to profits for DirecTV," said analyst McAlpine.
(http://abcnews.go.com/sections/business/Nightline/porn_020325.html)
In essentials, unity; In matters of opinion, liberty; In all things, love. | | Back to Top | | |
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Blood Washed Heretic
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 167
| Posted 9/3/2003 11:00 AM (GMT -6) | | Yeah, DLW, it's pretty obvious that conservangelicals have hopped into bed with the GOP over one issue and been suckered into accepting the rest of the platform...
But my intent in posting this article was to highlight the hand corporate greed has had in the moral decay of the US.
Trust me, the porn problem we have ain't going anywhere as long as cable/satellite/broadband continues its exponential growth without some sort of self-regulation by the companies involved. And since porn distribution gives such a boost to the blue chips' bottom line, I seriously doubt we're gonna see that.
And since "the party on the left is now the party on the right", at least as far as corporate control goes, the Dems aren't going to do anything about this either.
So, what can and/or should Christians be doing?
In essentials, unity; In matters of opinion, liberty; In all things, love. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 9/3/2003 11:43 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by Blood Washed Heretic
Yeah, DLW, it's pretty obvious that conservangelicals have hopped into bed with the GOP over one issue and been suckered into accepting the rest of the platform...
But my intent in posting this article was to highlight the hand corporate greed has had in the moral decay of the US.
Trust me, the porn problem we have ain't going anywhere as long as cable/satellite/broadband continues its exponential growth without some sort of self-regulation by the companies involved. And since porn distribution gives such a boost to the blue chips' bottom line, I seriously doubt we're gonna see that.
And since "the party on the left is now the party on the right", at least as far as corporate control goes, the Dems aren't going to do anything about this either.
So, what can and/or should Christians be doing?
We can alter the balance of power by being more autonomous from either party. We can compromise politically on abortion and play the candidates of the two parties off of each other. We can support the formation of a viable three party system so as to further undermine the ability of moneyed interests to gain too much influence over the parties.
The problem is that too many religious leaders, Boyd included, detract from the reality of the political. They either are idealists that fail to neglect the fallibility of their visions of how things would be better or because the post-millenialist/social gospel-movement failed, they don't see any biblical reason for why participation in the political process is something that all Christians should be called to do. It is basically a chasing after of the wind, in their view...
However, participation in politics designed to increase the number of interests served by the gov't can, in fact, be a form of giving collective witness to the world and making it easier for us to get hearings for our faith from non-Christians. It can also set up barriers to us being able to share about our faith.
And as for porn, it shd be emphasized that all forms of governance are fallible and that manicheisms between public and private are misleading in this regard. Economic and Social/Religious Conservatives have many issues on which they have strong disagreement.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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Laplace
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 138
| Posted 9/3/2003 11:55 AM (GMT -6) | | Blood Washed Heretic,
I understand your frustration, but I don't understand what you'd like us to do as individuals.
Yes, I've read the book "Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger" myself, and although understand the point that with great wealth comes great responsibility, we ought to understand that we as individuals are only responsible before God what our actions are, not what another's man/corporation/politicians sin is.
There is of course some need for balance and I'm not suggesting we play blind eye or go by the mantra "God helps those who help themselves" (which isn't in the Bible by the way).
However, what are we to do then? How is living like an Armish going to help the beggar on the street? Or by not voting at all going to change any policy. This world is filled with evil, and our country is no exception. Still, we are still IN this world, but are not to be OF it.
By the logical fallacy of boycotting certain industries (other than obvious ones like Playboy), you'd have to give up just about everything you consume. The gas in your car no doubt helps fund injustices to the environement. The clothes you wear are probably made by those in China who don't work or live under ideal conditions. Disney owns Miramax which makes some immoral R-rated movies. Heck, we live in a country that supports all sorts of amoral unBiblical laws including the "right" to murder millions of children on demand. Should we just pack our bags and leave?
Remember that originally the main argument against Capitalism and for Communism was that money created a lot of evil side effects. So if you removed money from the equation, you should have a more equal society. A study of most Communists countries (esp the former Soviet Union) should reveal this was not the case. All it did was lower everyone's standard of living and didn't really fix the injustices anyway. They just took on new forms, but you still had the same times of oppression. Those in charge we just as greedy as many corporations today.
The same can be said for the realm of politics. We ought not to try and stride for a Taliban-like perfect "Christian" state. The Bible says ALL governments are in essence provided under God's authority. We have to answer to them and obey UNLESS it contradicts the wishes of those who gave that authority. Not to say that all forms of government are equally effective, but honestly, in comparison to the rest of the world, our government is the longest existing one in the world today. We are fortunate, very fortunate to have had godly geniuses form it. It's too bad of course we have not been good stewards of what has been passed down to us.
What we should do as individiuals is be lights in whatever "world" we happen to be a part of and live according to Christ's teaching and to God's standard as taught in the Bible. That MAY entail living in poverty. That MAY mean political persecution. And it certainly MAY involve civil disobidience.
This of course does not mean no one should be involved in politics or to champion noble causes like yourself. But please understand that if it is your calling, it may not be another's. Remember, it's between you and God. I think God is aware of everything that goes on and His sovereignty will give perfect justice in the end (save that for our souls which we are spared that justice).
At least, that's how I try and live in this society.
"I say we blast the meatbag, Master" -HK-47, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic | | Back to Top | | |
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Tigress
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1252
| Posted 9/3/2003 12:25 PM (GMT -6) | | I understand both sides of this argument. DLW says that we as Christians have a responsibility to influence our government, while others say that we're supposed to obey the God-given authorities because we weren't called to be politicians but Gospel-bearers.
Yet, we also live in a different kind of government than any other during the time the Bible was written. In Jesus' day the people were under a dictatorship - an emperor who could command anything. I guess they often had a Senate, but I don't think it was usually all that effective, and they really only represented the most privileged and elite of Roman society, anyway, right?
Now we live in a democracy where we all do have the power to influence laws and even morality to a degree. Remember, it was a democracy that voted for Jesus to be crucified instead of Barabbas. I think that DLW is correct that Christians in a democracy should take advantage of the influence we have in government. I guess the real question is how much time and energy should we invest in that. I suppose the answer could be that if our political efforts become an idol, taking away from every Christian's calling to make disciples of all nations, we've gone too far. But, if we have a good balance, we're doing just fine.
That said, how best to approach this porn situation? 
Tigress 
"Name a shrub after me. Preferably one that's prickly and difficult to eradicate."
-Captain Jack Aubrey
"Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World" | | Back to Top | | |
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Laplace
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 138
| Posted 9/3/2003 1:44 PM (GMT -6) | | Just remember briefly a couple of things.
First of all, we are NOT a democracy. We are rather a Republic. The only true democratic state was ancient Greece. If it were a true democracy, most of the laws would be made and decided upon by Joe Citizen. However, this can get impractical and difficult to implement.
So we have the Republic idea which is touted as the "realistic" democracy. We vote on people democratic style and they SHOULD represent the will of the majority (the democratic idea). However, as we are well aware, the greatest fallacy in this we often only agree with a small percentage of a person's viewpoints. Furthermore, these elected people have the power to appoint others (say, Justices of the Supreme Court) who may have very divergent views and have no check by the people as a whole. Mix this in with a dispursion of power in our 3 branch system and you see that there is a price to pay. It is a good system, I believe, but not perfect. The majority of people at the time probably disagreed with Roe v. Wade, but there was little we could do except now we'd have to convince most of Congress to a Constitutional ammendment.
Answering the question then of, "Does law influence culture or the other way around?" I believe the answer is both. Most of us are used to a certain set of rules and values because that is what we are taught (for instance our generation hasn't known of life without value to privacy). And likewise, people's tolerance of certain behaviors (take sexual promiscuity for example) has affected many laws from sodomy to adultery to abortion.
Of course, what now is the best way to promote positive change in either society, our laws, or both? Which has more value? There are some laws people blatently ignore (honestly, how many of you steal MP3 music? Yes, it IS stealing as much as shoplifting). Likewise, most a ban on flag burning yet our laws do not permit for it.
I believe there are those who are indeed called to offices of government who are meant to stand up for "Christian" values. However, I see no Biblical mandate for everyone to be an active citizen on this level. I do however, see a mandate for all those who profess the name of Christ to "avoid what is evil", "love thy neighbor", "care for the poor", etc. These commands can take on many forms and it would be wrong to legalistically categorize what constitutes "loving", etc. Of course, none of us can live up to the ideal standard of such being imperfect beings, yet what is in our hearts? The Israelites during the time of the prophets must've been wondering why God was leading them into captivity. God said it was because they have not put God first and only. They put Him up there, but along with everything else. Gee, sounds like many Christians today (I'll be the first to raise my hand). I dare not assign tragedies as specific "punishments" by God. Maybe they are, maybe they aren't. But regardless, I am not surprised that we are in the straits we are now in. It is human nature that when we are comfortable that we tend to drift away from God, and when we are in distress we turn to Him (remember Sept 11th?).
Therefore, I suggest to make effective change, we not only pray dilligently (a necessary prerequisite for revival certainly), but also look for ways to "inconvenience" ourselves. Not meaning we intentionally and masochistically look for misery, but we stop considering OUR needs/wants first and look to God's, and then to our neighbors.
It is written that love covers a multitude of sins. It could be that our love for God and for others falls short in this country. And that in places of todry lifestyles people are still happy and at peace because they know what is important. Love of God, and love of people.
"I say we blast the meatbag, Master" -HK-47, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic | | Back to Top | | |
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Blood Washed Heretic
Registered Member
Date Joined Jul 2003
Total Posts : 167
| Posted 9/4/2003 5:31 AM (GMT -6) | | In the late 80's to mid-90's, when the economy was booming and profits were through the roof, many corporations began laying off droves of American workers, shutting down American plants, and, under the protection of NAFTA, shipping out of the country for cheap labor (Nike, GM, come immediately to mind). The only reason for doing this was to explode already-dizzying profits. Greed.
Meanwhile, the terminated factory workers all of a sudden had nowhere to go for employment. Guess what happens when people can't find jobs? They get desperate. A cycle of crime and depression quickly develops, and entire cities like Flint, MI (the home of General Motors) become functional ghettoes almost overnight.
If it wasn't for corporate greed, honorman, these things wouldn't happen on the scale we see now. And we needn't look further than the collapse of giants like Tyco and Enron to see that greed is still a problem. And what do we do? We smile and wink at those mischeivous CEO's, CFO's, and their "creative bookkeeping"... Those rascals, aren't they something? 
Anyway, I didn't really want to get in to that, but you asked. 
And honorman, I don't think conservatives are "evil" or "bad". I realize the liberal position has its shortcomings as well. That's why I try to stay as moderate as possible.
In essentials, unity; In matters of opinion, liberty; In all things, love. | | Back to Top | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 9/4/2003 6:22 AM (GMT -6) | | Okay honordude, I'm going to type this really slowly for you.
All corporations must be concerned with their bottom-line. If they didn't that wouldn't be good. An important way they do this is by lobbying the gov't against regulations that would impose additional costs on them and for corporate welfare that helps them to manage the fluctuations of the business cycle.
The thing is that corporations are like private gov'ts. They are subject to similar corruption problems that public gov'ts are subject to and generally speaking often their production does produce inconveniences on others. This is the reason why there needs to be some regulations by public gov't to check the sinfulness of corporate executives and redirect their energies along lines that serve the greater public good. So there is conflict between corporations and other and this conflict is resolved by the gov't.
The problem is that the gov't is itself in play over whose interests it should serve and moneyed interests often have a very strong influence over it. As such, it is not so autonomous of the private corporations and, therefore, doesn't serve to check their powers very effectively.
To put it another way, there is a scarcity of interests that the gov't can be put to serve. As such, there is conflict between corporate welfare and individual welfare and the relative strengths of the two in their ability to capture parts of the gov't is based on the relative importance of the democracy of the dollar and popular democracy.
Over the past thirty years, the way social/religious conservatives have been selling their votes for cheap to economic conservatives over the abortion issue has permitted the democracy of the dollar to gain more influence in the gov't than otherwise would be the case.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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Tigress
Registered Member
Date Joined Feb 2003
Total Posts : 1252
| Posted 9/4/2003 6:25 AM (GMT -6) | | | | |
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DLW
Registered Member
Date Joined Apr 2003
Total Posts : 2457
| Posted 9/4/2003 7:05 AM (GMT -6) | | quote:
Originally posted by honorman
DLW: I WILL TYPE EVEN SLOWER FOR YOU SO YOU CAN READ IT THAT MUCH EASIER. Being old enough to have friends in various positions in corp employment (and having spent different parts of my life in employment) I am well aware of how corporations work. And unlike you who pontificate from your "righteous" position as a professor among the "natives" (yes, that was a joke, but on your belief system, not on my view of Mexico, so try not be "righteousnessly" offended), I have lived it. I know the good and bad that goes on there, I have seen people hurt and seen people rise through the ladders and had their dreams fulfilled. I've seen people do wonderous things within the system and be crushed by it. And I've seen lazy people use it to just slide on through. So what?
The point is that you and Blood need to come to grips with the fact that corporations hold America up and are a big part of why it is great. Live with it, shape it or go somewhere else. But people who constantly whine and generalize about the "evil" of corporations bore me...Corporations are made of people...good and bad, is all...its only when people need a scapegoat that they turn into something more...
neither BWH or I want to get rid of corporations. I don't think I ever used the term evil wrt them.
The point is that unchecked their size and revenue streams do permit them to exert a quite sizeable level of influence over the gov't.
There are many good pragmatic reasons for wanting this influence to be reduced.
I believe BWH and I are both advocating for more autonomy by social/religious conservatives from the Republican party, since there are too many issues on which there is some conflict with the economic conservatives that predominate within the party.
dlw
Niebuhr thought that sustained moral energy in politics depended on religion's power to mobilize reason along with self-transcending love. The prophetic tradition, meanwhile, gave Jews and Christians some protection against the temptation to identify their social causes with God's will. Lincoln's second inaugural address expressed the prophetic insight, "The almighty has His own purposes." | | Back to Top | | |
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honorman
Registered Member
Date Joined Oct 2002
Total Posts : 1137
| Posted 9/4/2003 7:08 AM (GMT -6) | | | I have decided I would rather not have my views represented here. Therefore all quoted segments here with my name on them I disavow. Thanks! | | Back to Top | | |
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